Chapter Text
One Monday.
Grantaire is not having the best of days.
He’s learnt to differentiate. Slightly better days are the days where he can leave his curtains open. Where he can sit in a chair near either one of his two windows and feel sunlight burning his skin. Slightly better days are the ones when he can look out and see the sky, and watch the clouds moving for a few seconds before panic overtakes him. They’re days when he can paint for hours, inspired by the daylight, instead of feverish dreams and panic attacks, retching, sitting on his tiny bathroom floor.
The bad days, ugh— the bad days are the ones he has to watch out for. They're the ones that’ll probably kill him in the end (he’s long since made peace with this). The days where he closes the blinds and the only light in his room is his uncovered five watts light bulb, casting barely enough light to see outlines of anything , and where he fumbles around for his brushes and oils just so he has something to occupy his brain before it shuts down and leaves him crumpled on the floor clutching at his clothing and curly hair with sweating palms, breathing in two three four, hold breath two three four, breathe out two three four five six seven, breathe in two three four, clutching at a bottle of something, anything, stashed underneath his sink.
He supposes it could be worse, he knows it could be worse, so he makes do, his fingers tight around his palette knives while he attempts to make possibly the ugliest colour of green to convey the mush he feels his brain’s turned into. He sings Thank God It’s Friday under his breath, but he hasn’t actually checked a calendar for at least the time it took to finish his last three paintings. Below him, behind the curtain he’s left closed but not closed enough he can’t tell whether it’s day or night, cars and reckless bicyclists roam the streets of the more downtrodden side of Paris. He drains his umpteenth cup of black tea for the afternoon and remembers it’s his last bag, briefly entertains the idea of taking and downing his jar of citrus thinner instead, shakes his head, leaves it at that, resolves to order more tea.
Grantaire’s dances woodenly through his apartment, stumbling to avoid the takeout containers, empty bottles, and cans, stacks of newspapers he frantically holds onto as a small thread to the world outside his home, trying to remember where he’s put his laptop. He curses as he steps on a tube of Maimeri Brera acrylics, the tiny cap shooting off somewhere into the recesses of his living room, and a small, thick spray of Bronzo Perla squirting out onto his carpet, which inarguably has seen worse. He’ll clean it up later. (He won’t. He’ll step in it, smear it across his entire floor and curse himself for the irresponsible decisions of his past self, and then he won’t wash it off his bare foot till the next morning.)
He does eventually spot his laptop. He’s apparently left it on one of his side-tables, open and powered on, and then used his keyboard as a coaster for his pork stir-fry. Grantaire picks a snow pea off his spacebar, and then, after just a little bit of hesitation, sticks it in his mouth. The laptop doesn’t turn on when he presses the buttons that would usually make that happen, so he reasons, logically, it’s just another direct spit in the face from God, and tracks down his charger.
He’s halfway through a page listing a dizzying amount of tea options, clicking the small add to cart plus next to each one with ginger in it when his phone rings. He checks and stares at the caller ID for longer than it takes him to read it, and taps the green call button, smearing a shaky streak of paint over his screen. “Hello?”
“Oh, good, you’re alive,” drawls a voice from the other side, and he presses the phone closer to his ear, into his curls, straining to hear it over the rushing static he feels slowly lessening its hold on his brain. “Wasn’t sure, after Bahorel told me you’d ordered three boxes of black tea and nothing else."
“Éponine?” His voice is raspy from God knows how long he’s neglected to use it. He lowers himself into his chair, the broken springs pricking uncomfortably into his back and thighs through the thin, worn cushion, and presses at his screen with one of his clean fingers to put her on speakerphone, every button on his phone covered in a different, solemn colour. “I finished all that already, can you ask him to drop some more by later? It’s the healthy stuff you said I should drink, anyway.”
A tinny sigh sounds from the coffee table before he props his feet on the surface of it, making his phone bounce a little next to his socks. “Jesus, R, I’ll have him bring some quiches if it’ll stop you from slowly killing yourself. Death by black teas and oolong.”
"I'm not—"
"Yeah, yeah, you're staying healthy." He can imagine her waving one of her hands at him dismissively, telling him she’s heard all his arguments and won’t hear a repeat, even if he can’t see her do it. He does love her. "Bahorel will bring you your tea to fuel your terrible habit, and I'll throw a bottle of some sort of disgusting 0% stuff in the mix if you eat your veggies because I’m a terrible enabler."
Grantaire hates how easily he's bribed, but finds himself agreeing with a good amount of played reluctance. Éponine refuses to indulge his drinking habits with anything but sludge tasting faintly like the wine he desires, but without the effects. She has her reasons, most of them to do with that one time she had to sit with him as he puked his guts out across his kitchen floor while he kept begging her vehemently in between heaves to not call an ambulance. She knows he can manage to indulge perfectly well enough on his own, though, and sometimes, more often than not, he feels patronised, belittled, mocked, and grows angry at her. Today, though, he’s grateful. A fond smile makes his cheeks bunch up and the corners of his eyes crinkle, and he shakes his head. The static is a pleasant buzz at the back of his skull. “You’re an angel, Ep, you know that, yeah?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a descendant of Asteria, of Dike, of Themis, you love me and owe me your life, I know.”
Grantaire waits for the rest of her spiel on how much he owes her, and he knows and is glad to encourage them, but instead, she hesitates and makes the light silence in between them heavy. When she speaks again, her voice is layered with a million things that tell Grantaire he won’t like the following five minutes. “Yeah, you’re going to be pissed. I know you said no more, I really do, but we found you someone else anyway.” She's quiet for a little bit, only seconds, knowing he won't hasten to interrupt her regardless, and then adds, “because we care, you shithead.”
He knows her words aren’t malicious, but Grantaire still glares at her name on his display and vows to remove the two little pink hearts and the flower emojis floating next to it as soon as he’s done his part in petulantly hanging up without a word. “Ep, I don’t want—” another stranger in my house, scalpel ready to open my chest and bare my heart and soul and barge through the sludge—
“I know, R, really,” and the half-sigh in her voice makes him think, for a moment, she really does. “Just… talk to Jehan for a bit. Courf assured me this guy is solid.”
He barks a humourless laugh that makes his throat hurt and he knows sounds a little manic. “The last guy Courfeyrac sent tried to sell me drugs, Ep.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t exactly come in holding a sign he was into dealing methamphetamines, R. I swear, this guy is solid. He’s good. A little annoying, but he just wants to help people. And maybe, just maybe, he needs this as much as you do.”
Grantaire’s I don’t need help is cut off by Éponine switching lines as fast as she can (calls to Grantaire have given her ample practice), and it’s seconds of dial tone and staring, frowning, bristling at his cuticles, stained in some places with paints too tenacious to leave, before Jehan’s airy voice dances itself into his cold apartment. “R! Finish Final Harvest yet?”
Jean Prouvaire defies God, Grantaire thinks. This because he knows God exists solely to curse him, and Jehan lives as a blessing in his life in defiance of it. He looks at the book, untouched and covered by papers, all stacked on an armchair he never sits in and never has enough company to fill. “I'm halfway there.”
The noise Jehan makes is so thoroughly pleased Grantaire resolves to open the book tonight, even should his eyes shrink into raisins and his hands peel in layers. He hears him leafing through some papers, can imagine the messy stack slipping partly to the floor, knows Jehan’s habit of doodling floral vignettes in the corner of every document, so he easily imagines those too, and then hears him breathe a small triumphant ‘ah!’
“So your next buddy,” he begins, amusement very audible over the line. “He wanted to start immediately. Incredibly serious, mighty eager. We managed to hold him off till Wednesday, so don’t startle when there’s a knock on your door then.”
Grantaire doesn’t know Wednesdays. Or any other day of the week for that matter. He nods regardless, and then when he remembers this isn’t a visual conversation, mumbles, “alright.”
Jehan leaves him a moment for questions, but he doesn’t have any. He never does. Grantaire endures this ritual as concern from his friends and nothing more, and expects he will have to endure for many, many years until either the drink, his madness or lack of sunlight, if at all possible, leaves him a lifeless sack of meat, where he’ll finally have use as food for the soil. He doesn’t voice these thoughts, though. Jean Prouvaire, less than any other person, deserves the brunt of his despondent nihilism, in any case.
“He was very affronted when we asked him to please not try to sell you any drugs, so I suppose he can’t be any worse than the previous,” Jehan continues, voice tight with glee the way he usually only gets when telling Grantaire about a very good play he managed to see, or the flower baskets and vines of the Rue des Rosiers. “Asked so many questions I thought Joly was going to burst. His knuckles got so white, R. He had to have several herbal drinks brought to him.”
Promising, Grantaire thinks. He supposes if he had to spend hours and hours of his week with a small, fidgety little ball of a person, so unsure of everything he has to spend hours asking, he’d easily prefer that over a silent, shivering type. “Think he’s gonna go running as soon as he realises I’m not buying his boy scout cookies?”
“Joly seemed to know him, and then he goes to this bar Courfeyrac goes to,” Jehan continues, taking Grantaire’s comments in their stride. “Apparently he’s so intense. Cares about everything. Exact opposite of you, actually, professed to care about nothing.”
Well. “Well.” Grantaire closes his eyes. That's fact, and he won't begrudge anyone laying them out for him. “That's going to be a riot.”
“I’m sure!”
Grantaire listens to the sounds of traffic rushing by, something that sounds like a scooter honking angrily at, most likely, pedestrians carelessly crossing. Upstairs, his neighbour is in their kitchen, pipes rattling when they use the tap. To make tea, probably. He should make some tea. The streetlight next to his window blinks on, casting a yellow light into his room. He didn’t notice it getting dark out. He remembers he’s out of tea.
He barely hears Jehan when he starts talking again, though not for lack of volume. His lips make a small noise when they part, mouth dry suddenly, and he darts his tongue out to lick at them, saliva thick in his throat. “What?”
“I said, let’s talk about what to get you on my next library run, hm?”
He doesn’t know for how long they talk. Jehan asks him what he thinks of getting more Voltaire, and tells him he really ought to read Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and if he’s ever read T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. He hasn’t, so Jehan begins telling him so much about it, quoting parts he thinks Grantaire would enjoy, Grantaire feels he’s reading it already. Jehan tells him of what their friends have been up to, how Éponine works herself to the bone, far too often and far too long, about Gavroche’s first day in seventh grade. Jehan tells him about how Bahorel’s sporting a black eye and a large bump by his forehead because someone tried to swindle him at cards, and he was determined to not take it lying down.
When Jehan hesitates, maybe taking note of Grantaire’s pensive quiet, or maybe Grantaire yawned without realising and tells him to get some rest and he’ll text him the next day, Grantaire wants to say something meaningful to mark the conversation; something witty, effortless like he’s used to being. Something to distinguish this conversation from others, because sometimes they blur together, though he appreciates each and every one. What comes out instead is, “talk to you tomorrow,” and then, “thanks.”
The line goes dead, a steady, low beeping in his ear, and it takes him an embarrassingly long time to put his phone down. It’s near-drained, and the spot where he’d eventually pressed it into his cheek to hear better, still on speakerphone, is warm and glowing. It got very dark around him, the only light in the entirety of his apartment still the washed out glow of the streetlight a little ways below his window. He curls up in his chair and feels warm. Despite this, he barely sleeps at all.